


Of Shattered Glass and Worthless Condolences

by Acai



Series: Empty Cities and Hopeless Searching [3]
Category: Homstuck
Genre: AU, Everyone is there, Homestuck AU, Lonely Karkat, Sad, Sadstuck, everyone remembers the game, kanaya just wants to find rose, mentions of Internet Explorer, no one but the kids and trolls remember the game, part 3/4, part three of a series, reset world after the game, sadstuck au, sollux is reluctant to help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone says that that there's no way to find them, to just give up. You knew better, you knew that it had to be possible. You know that the game wouldn't go through that much trouble to remake everything and then leave the humans out of it all, and that when you said "let's go home," this isn't what you meant. This isn't home. This is lonely, sad, and frankly a little scary. You're all here, obviously. All twelve of you, and though there's no Trollian and therefore no way to even see if they're all really out there, you know that you can find them regardless of what everyone is saying. </p>
<p>You won't listen.</p>
<p>You know better.</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>the AU where after Sburb ended and they all went home it wasn't really home, but a new reset Alternia that the game created.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Shattered Glass and Worthless Condolences

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the Part Three of Empty Cities and Hopeless Searching.
> 
> There will either be one or two more parts and then I'll end it, but I did take the consideration to not put TOO much of a cliffhanger of this one.
> 
> I did make sure not not answer any of the questions you were really vying for though ;)
> 
> Anyways! Please enjoy! It's short, it's badly written, and it doesn't go along with the others. I apologize for that PROFUSELY. It's just something I whipped up while I had the inspiration whilst on break from school. I'm hoping to update Constellations soon but I'm terribly afraid that I don't have any inspiration and need more of you to PLEASE give me ideas!!

You admit that usually you were mad about things that didn't matter. This time, though, you felt you deserved to be mad. Why was no one looking? Why was no one trying? Why was no one hunting for them? For some way to find them? Did no one care? 

They all said they did, they all said they cared about figuring out what happened, but the minute that they couldn't find the Trollian icon they all just gave up. Kanaya said that this was the games way of giving back the years that they spent playing the game, that it was the games way of giving back the worlds that it destroyed and the good lives that it took. 

You, although feeling admittedly guilty about it, would rather they had stayed dead. They were all perfectly content with it, they were all perfectly fine, and everyone was still together in that world that was so much better. In that world everything was so bright and magical, literally. Who the fuck would've known that there were moons specified for dreaming? Who would have thought that there was a world in the sky up there?

Who would have known that there was humans? And who knew where they went, because they sure as hell weren't on Alternia. 

You knew, additionally, that you hadn't imagined it. 

For a while you had thought that you had. When you'd woken up on the floor by the stairs with a major headache and more confusion than ever. When you were shorter than you remembered, younger than you remembered. When you had looked around you and had been in your hive, when Crabdad was asleep on the floor a little ways away. You had felt a slight jolt of panic, seeing him there with his eyes closed. Watching him a little longer, though, verified that he was just asleep. 

The next surge of confusion had come upon opening your husktop to see if anything weird had happened to anyone else. There wasn't a Trollian icon, there was nothing, in fact. Just an internet browser that was, in all honesty, completely shitty. 

In the process of doing this though, you managed to knock over a glass that was sitting on your desk for who knows how long. It hit the floor with a thud and shattered into pieces on the carpet. You just stared at it, staring at the shattered pieces as they glistened in the light.  You stir yourself out of your trance long enough to skirt around the glass and tell yourself to get up and do something. 

The image of glistening glass remains in your mind.

Your first step of action was to head to Sollux's. Other than Gamzee and Kanaya, he was the only who's exact address you knew. He also lived the closest.

After some very persistant and irritated knocking, the door had opened and there he was. Not blind, not as tall as Karkat remembered, but the same six sweep old kid that Karkat remembered from before the game. This is where you began to doubt the dream theory, because he remembered exactly the same things as you did. You figured out a method of keeping in touch via the shitty browser, and sent him off to Aradia's, and you made your way to Kanaya's, who remembered it all as well. After finding no difference in Terezi and Gamzee, who was sopored up as fuck, you all went off to talk to whoever you could out of the rest of the twelve of you. After checking in with  _all_ of you it was no doubt that it wasn't a dream. 

It was also no doubt that there was never any Sgrub. 

In all honesty no one knew what was happening. You all had some pretty good idea, none that made any sense, but good ideas nonetheless. You crashed at Kanaya's because her hive was right in the goddamn middle of all of yours. 

It didn't take long to figure out that the world had been taken back to before the game happened. It didn't take long to figure out that there was no way to see if the humans ever existed, it didn't take long to figure out that there was no way to even attempt to contact them. That's where about roughly six of you shrugged and gave up. That's also where six of you persevered hopelessly and where you decided that even here in a small room with twelve other trolls you felt pretty alone.

You felt alone, confused, and messed with. You felt like everything was for nothing, you felt like it never even happened. You wished that you never played the game and you wished that you never left the game. 

The real world was painfully dull.

You couldn't count how many times Kanaya had mumbled that it was all going to work out, you couldn't count how many times Gamzee had proclaimed that everything would be a "motherfuckin' miracle" in the end. It was pointless to try and keep track of the number of times that you'd heard some kind of worthless condolence. You stopped listening to them after a while.

As it hit you with the force of a truck that you were back in the real world you wanted nothing more than to be alone. Everything looked gray. Everything looked like shades of the same awful color, everything looked dull and real and boring. 

The thing about real life is that there's no escaping it, you realized. You can't fall asleep and wake up on some bright and wonderful moon. You can't talk to people when they die, you can't look for a world covered in brilliant blues and surrounded by the softest clouds hidden up in the sky. You can't see things in the same light that you did when everything was possible and everything was bright and magical and wonderful. 

Because now everything was the same dull world that you grew up in.

The same world where you feared for your life twenty-four seven. The same world where you were outcasted and set aside. The same world where you constantly had to lie to avoid being ruthlessly killed. The same world where you hid, the same world where it all started.

It mostly just hurt to know that it could never happen again.

Correction.

It mostly hurt to know that you were stuck here for good this time.

After another three or four perigees the only people who still cared enough to try and figure out a way to find Earth were you, Kanaya, Terezi and a reluctant Sollux. You all didn't even bother notifying the others once verification came back on the existence of Earth came back to you. You just gave Sollux the task of trying to find a human web browser to try and hack into. 

After another handful of perigees you finally found one that worked, albeit being shittier than what you trolls got stuck with. 

You spent days pouring through the web pages, scrolling through all the forms of communication that you found but each time turning up fruitless. Pesterchum was never a thing, nor Sburb beta or alpha. You found sites with more than five million people on them, yet no one with the name Rose Lalonde. With almost a vicious power driving her, Kanaya spent even more time than you pouring over the browser on a hunt to find her matesprit. 

You eventually found a social media with a user by the name  _turntechGodhead._ You never moved faster than you did in the moment that you spent figuring out how to message someone on the shitty human social media. After roughly thirty minutes of frusteration you had set up an account by the same username that you'd used your entire life. You clicked on the username, hitting the 'Add to Contacts' button. 

_Hi turntechGodhead, I'd like to add you as a contact._

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment and a kudos for the fourth part! Subscribe to know how it ends, and please comment any mistakes you may have found whilst reading!
> 
> >>thank you!


End file.
